Un exemple de transgression : l’intrusion de l’Italien dans Candide de Voltaire

Abstract

This article considers the multi-faceted Italian in Voltaire’s philosophical tale Candide as figured in the old woman, the eunuch and Pococuranté. It examines the study of contradictory signs that make up the Italian ethnos in Candide, an example of projection in which the other, the foreigner, nevertheless remains undefinable. In the eighteenth century, the figure of the Italian was imbued with political and moral ambiguity. Often described through degrading stereotypes and a dampened discourse, the figure of the foreigner or other often mitigates the severity painted in a cruel, violent and immoral reality, a paradoxical reality that represents France and Italy in an epoch where disorder reigns, and in a century that, despite its attempts to wax philosophical, is not philosophical enough. Making the other speak, especially in his own language, therefore becomes a writerly ruse, a discursive strategy adopted by French philosophers and novelists such as Voltaire to communicate a reformist agenda, at once reactionary and rebellious. Through often denigrating commentary in Italian, the fictional discourse of the Enlightenment complicates a simpler classical narrativity and becomes a topos of transgression, a shocking locution, that, masked under the guise of a harmless farce, forces one to reflect on often humiliating topics such as rape, fanaticism, violence or injustice. A discourse overdetermined by a superficial ethnic referent thus underlies more serious preoccupations.